100 best lycées in France

A Google Maps/Le Figaro mashup.

3 comments, including Trevor: Edited. Though many of my favourite readers were spammers before they went into the meat grinder.

A fragment from Italo Calvino’s quasi-17th century folk romance, Il visconte dimezzato/The cloven viscount, uses storks as a portent of battle. Several unconnected 2nd century Greek accounts might appear to do the same, perhaps particularly if one’s a lazy sod and doesn’t read anything but scraps of stuff on Google Books.

Catalan language policy: Marxist, Stalinist, Francoist or fascist?

The precedents for, and some possible implications of, the Catalanisation of Barcelona’s cinemas. Plus some crowd-pleasing video of the Quebec language police in action. (Allez! Allez! Allez! And the hell with the economy!) All in somewhat fevered response to an article by Martin Dahms in the Tages-Anzeiger.

26 comments, including Rab: @ Jeremy Well, then the same applies to everybody: I wish immigrants to Catalonia spent more energy

Translating Hamlet into Siberian

How would you describe the relationship of the Slav Francisco with his mother?

2 comments, including Trevor: That's good stuff, but not to be outdone here's a chunk of Serb Hamlet, from the Yugoslav Youth Thea

Portrait of the artist as a jam-jar

And of a great British pub landlord, Juan from Málaga.

Decadent graffiti art at nursery entrance in Carmelo, Barcelona

The artist speaks.

Scorbutic gums, CC from Wikimedia Commons

The secret language of doctors

Why and how the 17th century Portuguese tropical medicine specialist, Aleixo de Abreu, tried to prevent proles from reading his cure for scurvy.

Chop up those gift-bearing Catalans

Scratch a libertarian and you’ll discover a totalitarian, so keep scratching.

Pig / lion / monkey / child wine

A Portuguese menagerie of sozzledness.

2 comments, including A Nun: Fifty? That's nothing: Gaspar Caldera de Heredia['s ...] principal work, to the merit of which we ca

Nice work if you can eat it

Influence of fat content on palatability of roast beef.

Commental asylum

Das Scroll und Scream Kitschin' Kabinett des Dr Kalebeul

Unbreakable reads

More stuff

FollowTheBaldie.com: Vertaling in ‘t Nederlands.
My Barrel Organ: Massive cock.
Fucked Translation: "the economic vice, Elena Salgado, has traveled to London to soothe investor sentiment"
Facebook: Trevor can't keep up with John and Neil.
I'm reading A feed could not be found at http://books.google.com/books?lr=&start=20&as_list=BDWryajYQ6uSrs-PN3KwYGhRhlUdUrWnsn_nQrvovqGgBSkXVIg&output=rss
on Google Book Search.
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Incoming

It confuses Antoni “Everything comes from the great book of Nature” Gaudí with whatever Gaudi means in Pushtu.

No, wait, isn’t that Montserrat in the background?!

(Pic: Wikimedia Commons. More nominally Muslim fortresses here.)

On this day

Barcelona

February 9 1848
En el año del Señor 1839 un cirujano de la villa de Sancti Spiritus en la provincia de Badajoz hizo saber á la Diputacion provincial de Sevilla, que habia encontrado un remedio seguro para curar el dolor de muellas, remedio que consistia en apretar entre los dientes el mástil de una guitarra ...

Josep Pla, Palafrugell (1918-9)

9 de febrer de 1919 Diumenge. Matí de petites volves d’aigua glaçada. Un cel com esmerilat. Fredor insidiosa i desagradable. Havia d’haver anat a començar d’aprendre la instrucció militar a l’Acadèmia de les Drassanes. No hi he anat. A la tarda, acompanyo Xavier Güell a casa seva –un pis sumptuós i sòlid del Passeig de Gràcia. Té foc a la llar. [...]